Blog For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China face a quickly changing competitive landscape — one that their existing technology strategies can’t keep up with. To address this challenge, organizations are migrating from earlier-generation BI architectures, technologies, and organizational structures to new models and approaches. My “Chinese State-Owned Enterprise Targets Improved Agility” report, scheduled to appear later this month, describes the experience of a typical large Chinese SOE, the China National Cereals, Oils, and Foodstuffs Corporation (COFCO), which leveraged a BI-led program to jump-start the transformation of its technology management capabilities.

COFCO is China’s largest supplier of agricultural and food products and services, including oils, rice, wine, tea, and various other products, and is expanding into real estate, shopping centers, and other industries. COFCO is a large B2B trader with many technology stakeholders, and its headquarters couldn’t quickly collect or analyze data from branches or business units, delaying the company’s response to and decisions about market changes. Major obstacles included siloed operations centers and business units; inconsistent data management rules that complicated centralized data governance; and other process and people challenges.

To address these issues, COFCO decided to redefine the position of technology management in the organization and review its technology agenda and planning. It evaluated and selected BI as the most compelling project to deliver quick business outcomes that would convince business executives to further invest in the transformation. Best practices that COFCO implemented include:

Ahead of the publication of my full report in mid-April, I wanted to follow on from my recent blog post and expand on the topic of cloud adoption in the Asia Pacific (AP) banking sector. Despite some views to the contrary, all AP banks will ultimately leverage cloud-based services and capabilities; most already do. The real challenge is mapping workloads, processes, and data to the various flavors of cloud approaches — in other words, it’s still a portfolio management exercise.

Legacy application architectures and inflexible software licensing practices will certainly influence, and potentially hinder, cloud adoption. But while banking regulations will continue to heavily influence cloud strategies, they don’t forbid them. Senior technology and business decision-makers in the AP banking sector should therefore consider the following:

To jump on this R feeding frenzy most leading BI vendors claim that they “integrate with R”, but what does that claim really mean? Our take on this – not all BI/R integration is created equal. When evaluating BI platforms for R integration, Forrester recommends considering the following integration capabilities:

A movement that began in Silicon Valley, is starting to have profound impacts on corporations throughout the world that are far from obvious but critical to your success and maybe even your company’s survival. This is a massive shift that all CIOs need to start preparing for - a seismic shift that is documented in my latest report released to clients this week.

As we enter the age of the customer we are leveraging cloud, mobile and big data technologies to build better and more complete experiences with our customers. In doing so we are creating new digital experiences, radically different interactions, and redefining what our companies do and how they should be viewed. Nike’s FuelBand is both a device and a collaboration solution (that’s why Under Armour bought MapMyFitness). Siemens Medical’s MRI machines are both a camera (of sorts) and a content management system Heck, even a Citibank credit card is both a payment tool and an online financial application. Any company that is embracing the age of the customer is quickly learning that you can’t do that without software.

Do you ever wonder how your business applications portfolio stacks up against your peers?

We conducted a series of interviews to understand how firms measure applications portfolio coverage of their business units and business models, end-user use of applications, and business value. We’re inviting application leaders to take a 10 to 15 minute survey anonymously to give their feedback on the metrics and their own estimate of their scores. We plan to aggregate the data then slice and dice by size or SIC or other “firmographics,” so that you can compare yourself with similar firms.

Dozens of your peers have already completed the survey and we want to write the report next week. But it's not too late. You can still join the fun here :

When computers were invented 60 years ago, nobody would have thought that gazillions of 0 and 1s would soon rule the world. After all, that’s all there is in any computer memory, be it a laptop, a mobile phone, or a supercomputer like Watson; if you could open memory up and visualize the smallest elementary unit, you would “see” only an infinite sequence of 0s and 1s, something that would look like this:

Interestingly, that has not changed. Computers are still processing 1s and 0s. What has changed is that we live in an age of digital disruption, an age where software applications run and rule our business more and more. To be successful, those applications need to be engaging and entertaining so that consumers enjoy and are delighted by them; they also have to be mobile and accessible anywhere and at anytime, and they have to leverage tons of information, no matter if it comes from a database, a tweet, or Facebook.

I'm moving into covering the greater CRM space, yet still retaining a deep focus on customer service technologies. Now-retired analyst extraordinaire, William Band and I put together our top trends for CRM in 2014. These trends are all about leveraging strategies and technologies for better understanding, connecting with, serving, and delighting customers. You can access the full CRM Trends Report for 2014 here.

Trend 2: Enterprises Will Embrace Tools That Create An Outside-In Perspective. To make meaningful improvements, organizations must align their customer experience ecosystems. That requires understanding customers' deep needs, viewing interactions from the customer's perspective, and socializing customer insights - and organizations will embark on this journey in 2014.

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Driving home from the Boston Logan airport in the winter can be an adventure. Fortunately, local governments have set up a means for reporting one of the perils — potholes. I know this because an overhead digital sign told me the number to call if I saw one. I appreciate the opportunity to help out, but the inefficiencies in this system make me cringe! If I see a pothole, I have to remember where it was until I have a chance to write it down. I also have to remember the nearest cross-street or landmark to help crews identify the proper location. And if I come across a second pothole before writing down all the first information? No chance I remember either. Does anyone remember playing the telephone game as kids? This is the modern version.

Many of our clients call with a similar challenge — how do we modernize manual processes for a digital/mobile world? With that in mind, how are many solving this today?

Create a mobile app. Mobile first! Everything is mobile these days, so let's jump on that train! While this is a good start, it’s important to understand the context of the user. There’s a good chance they’re using the GPS app on their phone to find the optimal way home. To use a new app, I have to go to the app list, find the new “Report Pothole” app, wait for it to initialize, and then report the incident. By then I’m no longer at the physical location and thus haven’t solved much of the manual problem. Solving this requires a better first step…

The findings presented in an article by German magazine Computerwoche published on Feb 11, 2014, are a forceful reminder that messages about excessive data capture via mobile apps seem to have gone unheeded so far. As reported, tests by TÜV Trust IT established that “almost one in two mobile apps suck up data unnecessarily”.

What’s “unnecessary” of course depends on your viewpoint: it may seem unnecessary to me if my mobile email app captures my location; the provider of the app, on the other hand, could be capturing the information to provide me with a better service and/or to make money from selling such data to a third party. The trouble is that I don’t know, and I don’t have a choice if I want to use the app. From a consumer perspective, this is not a satisfactory situation; I’d even go as far as calling it unacceptable. Not that it matters what I feel; but privacy advocates and regulators are increasingly taking notice. Unless app providers take voluntary measures, they may see their data capture habits curtailed by regulation to a greater degree than would otherwise be the case.

Let’s step back a moment and consider why so many mobile apps capture more data than is strictly speaking necessary for the functioning of the app:

Forrester began surveying global banking platform deals in 2005. For 2013, we evaluated about 1,600 banking platform deals submitted by 29 vendors and located in about 130 countries. Shortly, we will publish the final results of this evaluation. Today, I want to offer some initial trends:

Counted deal numbers are the second highest ever. The number of counted new named deals is the second level we have yet recorded. The number of new-named deals shrunk; extended business deals increased and the banking platform market grew.

The banking platform market shifted gears again. Top 10 vendors still represented the vast majority of new named deals that we counted, but fewer vendors than in 2012 enjoyed more than ten percent of all counted deals.

Banks' total assets indicate three vendor categories. One group of vendors won very small banks only and another group’s projects reached up to medium sized-banks. Only six vendors’ clients touch the total assets range of tier 1 banks (and go beyond it).

All the details will be available with a series of forthcoming reports focusing on the success of the participating vendors, the regional success perspective, as well as delivered functionality. If you do not want to wait: I will share some of the results during a Forrester Teleconference on February 27 As always, let me know your thoughts: jhoppermann (at) forrester.com.